[Billy_bob_bob]

You are experiencing the famous "creeping death" syndrome on your PC. The only fix for it that I know of is to carefully archive all of your critical data and reformat your hard drive. If you have a system with pre-installed software then it gets a little tougher, you'll probably end up needing to load a new copy of the OS.

I got tired of going through all of these issues, which is why I switched over to Apple computers. They really do "just work".

[Quilla]

Reformat the hard drive - I'm afraid I'm familiar with the process. I can easily copy critical date via the network and then reinstall OS and engineering software. But it's really a shame this operation has to be performed on such a 'young' computer. Sheesh, I hate this stuff.

Many, many thanks.